The processing step of silver halide photographic materials generally includes a washing step. It has recently been suggested to reduce the amount of water used in the washing step in view of the requirements for prevention of environmental pollution, economization of water resources and reduction of manufacture cost. For instance, S. R. Goldwasser has proposed in his report of "Water Flow Rates in Immersion Washing of Motion Picture Film" in Journal of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, Vol. 64, pp. 248-253 (May, 1955), a method for the reduction of the amount of water used in the washing step by the use of multistage washing tanks where water is run in a countercurrent flow system. This method has been employed in various kinds of automatic developing machines as an effective means for economization of the amount of water.
Apart from this, other methods have been proposed where a stabilizing solution to which various chemicals are added is used in place of the washing step with only water so as to reduce the amount of the processing solution used in the washing step, as described in Japanese patent application (OPI) Nos. 8542/82, 14834/83, 132146/82, 18631/83, and 184345/84. The term "OPI" as used herein means an "unexamined and published application".
However, all of the above-mentioned methods are so defective that the reduction of the amount of the processing solution used results in an increase of Dmin of the photographic material after processing.
The cause of the defect is, first of all, a so-called color stain of a sensitizing dye incorporated in the photographic material wherein the dye cannot sufficiently be washed out from the material because of the small amount of water used in the washing step thereby remaining in the film of the material after being processed.
In general, two factors are considered to determine the color stain of the sensitizing dye: (i) one is that the dye is decolored by the reaction with sodium sulfite contained in the developer and (ii) the other is that the dye is taken out of the emulsion layer in the washing step.
However, both of these two factors have a close relation to the structure of the dye used and, therefore, it was extremely difficult to selectively use such a dye that is less in color stain without adversely affecting other important photographic characteristics such as sensitivity, spectral sensitivity, etc.